Puppy love

Ava loves the puppy that came in her Easter basket. If I lay it out on a blanket with other toys, it's the one she always reaches for. Yesterday she finally figured out how to bring it up to her mouth. She was pretty pleased with herself. :)

Milestones

Ava has discovered her hands during this past week. She's been sucking on them since day one, but this last week she's figured out how to reach out for other things. She will stare really intently at her toys for a while, then swat in their direction. Sometimes she makes contact and even grabs on. She loves the toys I've attached to her car seat and spends a lot of her time in the car staring intently at them and trying to get them.

Finally, she's starting to get into somewhat of a napping schedule. If I swaddle her before I feed her, she'll usually take a long morning nap. With picking up the kids in the afternoon, the swaddling doesn't always happen, so she'll usually take a few short afternoon cat naps and one early in the evening. For the last two nights Ava has slept through the night (until 5:00 or 6:00 a.m.) which just amazes me! I hope that this will keep up once I go back to work to make that transition a little easier. :)

Here's a few pictures of my gorgeous blue eyed girl....

 

 

 

 

Update on the girls

Ava's 2 month check up was on April 24th. She was 9 lbs 12 oz (10 percentile for weight) and 23 1/2 inches (50th percentile for height.) Just like big sister was, and still is - tall and skinny. Doctor said she's not worried about her weight because she was 5th percentile at her 2 week appointment, so she's slowly moving up the curve. We know she has reflux, and we know that I have slow gaining babies. And Ava is alert and meeting milestones, so we'll just continue on with breastfeeding and she'll grow at her own pace.

I've been so blessed to have two amazing doctors when the girls are babies (Raegan's pediatrician was the best, but sadly she passed away when Raegan was 4 months old). It's so wonderful to have a doctor that understands breastfeeding and how breastfed babies gain weight, and who doesn't push formula on us. It's really important to me to have exclusively breastfed babies, and it helps to have a supportive doctor.

Ava has really just come alive in the last two weeks. She's started putting her hands in her mouth a lot, with a little bit of thumb sucking. She's starting trying to swat at and kick the toys in her play mat, and she looks at and tries to reach for the toy on her carseat handle. She smiles all the time, and we're starting get a lot of little "heh heh" laughs with her smiles. It's funny because sometimes she'll be upset (either tired or upset tummy) and she'll be mid fuss and make eye contact with one of us and start smiling. She'll smile real big then start fussing again during her smile. It makes me laugh every time.

Ava loves Big Sis and watches Raegan all the time. It takes me back to when Raegan was a baby and used to watch Zane all the time. Zane is really good with Ava too. He's such a good big brother.

Raegan is doing amazing with reading. She finished all of the beginning reader books at school and is able to read simple sentence books. She's starting to write a lot more, and will try to write out words with inventive spelling. It's really cute, and I know from my job that she's making progress in her writing development. I'm excited to see how far she goes next year doing kindergarten at Montessori school. The fact that she's staying at her school for kindergarten has helped keep all my feels about her going to kindergarten at bay. It's not quite as much, "Oh my baby!" as I think it would be if we were going to kindergarten round up and enrolling her in public school.

The egress window is FINALLY in, and Luke started painting this weekend. I'm hoping that by the end of the month we have all of the kids moved to their new rooms and there can be some order in the house again. I think that we could probably put Ava in her crib for at least part of the night once that room is hers, but I'm just not ready for that yet. She's doing a fantastic job of sleeping about half the night in her cradle in our room (something Raegan never did!) and she's so little still that I like having her close to me. Plus, I kind of like listening to her little snores and wuffles before I fall asleep at night. :)

6 weeks old!

Today Ava is 6 weeks old! I can't believe she's already been a part of our family for so long. If I were taking a "standard" maternity leave I would be at work right now. Ugh. That just sounds awful. I'm so glad I'm staying home until August.

Last week was a big week for Ava. Monday marked her first cold and first non well check visit to the doctor. Raegan wasn't sick until she was much older, so Ava had me a little worried. She had a fever of 100.2 Sunday evening (100.4 is when you take them in when they are that young) and was really congested. Our doctor said she is just fine - her lungs sound good and her ears are clear, so I just need to keep an eye on her at this point.

Monday was also Ava's first time to roll over from tummy to back. She was doing tummy time after supper and as she was rocking back and forth I said, "You're just going to roll over, aren't you?" Then BAM! over she went. It was pretty exciting.

Wednesday, Ava started giving us intentional smiles. There were a couple times the week before where Luke and I thought she was smiling intentionally, but Wednesday it was obvious, and she kept doing it. She's such a pretty baby, but she just lights up when she smiles.

She's still sleeping well. Between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. she usually wakes up twice, but sometimes I get blessed and she only wakes up once. She wants to nurse pretty frequently in the evening, but I'll take that tradeoff for being able to sleep decently at night. She's quite the grumbler though and usually will spend at least 30 minutes after her second night feeding groaning and grumbling. Right now I can laugh about it, but it's not quite that funny when I'm trying to get back to sleep....

Cloth diapering is going well. I'm still not using them at night, but her legs are still so skinny I'm afraid she'll leak out the sides with them on for an extended time. They work pretty well during the day - I've only had a few blow outs, but they would have wrecked a disposable too, so not bad. Mainly I'm using my Flips and prefolds, but I do have a few newborn all in ones that I'm using too. Laundry hasn't been a problem yet, and I'm hoping I can get Luke to hang me a laundry line soon so we don't have all these diapers hanging around the house to dry.

Ava fell asleep during tummy time yesterday. And then proceeded to sleep for over an hour. But she won't sleep in her cradle. Silly girl!

Our Weekend

Raegan got a wooden "ghoul bus" kit from school that her and Daddy put together Friday evening. She gets to use a hammer sometimes at school and she did quite well with it for this project too.

 

 

As seen on my walk on Saturday afternoon. I just love fall so much!

 

 

A very early Sunday morning art project. Because Daylight Savings Time means nothing to a four year old.

 

 

Sunday afternoon trip to the library. I've been trying to get back in the habit of taking Raegan again weekly and our weekends have been slow enough lately that we've been managing. We've found some fantastic new books to read (including "The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog" and "Into the Castle") and Raegan gets to play with some different toys. She did this alphabetic order puzzle completely by herself. Which really doesn't surprise me, since she was able to do alphabetic order last year in preschool. But it's always nice to see the results of preschool, you know? :)

 

And while I'm talking about Raegan's learning, she's really starting to take off with reading and sounding out words. Yesterday while we were reading a book before supper, she sounded out and read "bed", "hug" and "bag", all of which were words that I had never had her try to sound out before. And she didn't even struggle - it was just a smooth sound out then she said the word. And last week she brought home a sheet where she had written numbers 11-19 and has shown us how she can count by 10s. Sometimes she just blows me away!

More writing

For someone who was doing no writing in May, Raegan has really taken off with writing. It's really amazing to this Mama. In the first picture she asked me how to spell Mommy and wrote it as I spelled it. Oh, my heart. And the second picture was her writing letters from the front of a library book. Smart, smart girl.

 

 

Progress!

I've been working really hard with Raegan this summer on her starting to write her name. Although her teacher said she would like her to be able to write her full name by end of summer, I wasn't holding Raegan to that expectation. As long as she can write her name fully by kindergarten, I'm happy. That's what's developmentally appropriate anyway.

However, Raegan is doing an amazing job. She really struggles with the "e" still, but so has every child I've ever taught. I can't believe she went from being able to write none of her name to almost all of it in just a few months.

Raegan is reading!

Raegan has known all of the letter sounds for quite a few months now. She's been able to sound out three letter words, but hasn't been able to blend it into actual reading yet. On April 24th (recording this date for posterity!) we were reading a book and I was showing her how to sound out words in it. Afterwards, I wrote the word cat on a piece of paper and told her to sound it out. She sounded it out and blended it into a word. The look on her face was pure amazement. You could see it click with her - this is how you read. She had me write more words and tried to sound them out (she could do "it" but not a few others). Later when she was playing with her blocks she noticed they had words on them and started trying to sound them out too.

Currently we are working on the -at family, which she's pretty fluid at. She can also do "mom" which I threw in there to make Raegan actually have to read instead of just memorizing. Now we're starting on the -an family.

I love reading so much. I was such a reader when I was a child, and I'm so excited to see my daughter start on the same path.

Raegan's "pretend" birthday

So since Raegan has a summer birthday, they let her do a half birthday/pretend birthday celebration at her preschool. Montessori has a really neat tradition they do for birthdays, where the child gets to travel around the sun for each year of their life, while the parent shows pictures and talks about the things the child liked at that age. It was pretty cool. And it was so wonderful to actually get to go into Raegan's school and see her in action. She has friends, one little girl in particular that she was inseparable from while I was there. And it's always interesting to me as a preschool teacher to see how other preschools run. Montessori is so organized and structured. I mean, I run a tight ship in my classroom, but it's nothing like the order and peace in a Montessori room. I wanna teach Montessori!!! :)

Discussing things with friends during clean up time

Raegan talks about the little blonde at home a lot. Turns out they are actual friends. :)

Singing the celebration song when they first came to circle. The little blonde next to Raegan was all, "Sit by me Raegan, sit by me!" My baby has friends!!! :)

Raegan getting her lesson ready. She put down the yellow circle, then turned on the flashlight. The rays that go around the sun have a name of a month on each one.

They sang the song about the months of the year, then Raegan went and stood by August. For every year I talked about, she held the globe and traveled around the sun. (No pictures of that part because I was busy reading her story and passing around pictures.)

Singing happy birthday to Raegan

She was a little bashful but loved every minute of it.

Posing for Mama with her lesson

My big girl

A pic from out on the playground. I love this little girl so very very much.

Raegan's Parent Teacher Conference

We had Raegan's conference earlier this week, and she is doing awesome in school. She recognizes numbers 1-10 consistently (and is starting to name 11 and 12, just confuses the two sometimes). She counts to 39, and can pattern and count objects. She recognizes and produces rhyming words, and is starting to do sound boxes (where she gets a box filled with objects that start with one of three letter sounds - she has to match the objects to the letter they start with). Her teacher expects her to be done with those by the end of this school year. She said that she is very bright and inquisitive and she loves the practical life activities (pouring, fine motor with tongs and tweezers, cracking nuts, etc) and folding towels. :) She's made friends, especially some of the boys her age, and Ms. Sherry said she likes to pick a different boy to follow around every day. She watches him do an activity (because there's only one of each activity in Montessori rooms) and as soon as he's done, she chooses it next. :) I'm not surprised, because of how much she adores her big brother.

And she's still not even 3 1/2! She might be the youngest one when she finally goes to kindergarten, but I'm fairly certain she will be the smartest! :)

Quick update

Raegan has adjusted very well to preschool. She was rather hesitant the first two weeks at drop off in the morning, but now we have no problems. We're starting to hear a variety of different songs that they sing there, and we're seeing that she is learning so much. She went in knowing almost every uppercase letter, and now we're seeing an explosion of learning lowercase letters too. She's picking up the sounds of the letters through the curriculum that they use, and is now counting to 20. She knows the days of the week and has the order of the months up to May. :) The last two weeks she's been on a rhyming word kick - she can come up with a rhyming word for any word you tell her. A lot of times her fallback sound is "h" - What rhymes with bat? "hat" What rhymes with cow? "how" and sometimes she'll even make up words to rhyme with what we say. Just another super important skill that sets the stage for her learning how to read.

The biggest thing that we are struggling with right now is getting her to dress herself in the morning. Raegan is NOT a morning person, and never really has been. On the weekends she is pretty happy, but that's because she gets to get up on her own time, which is usually at least an hour later than when I wake her up for school. I obviously am not expecting her to do everything perfectly yet, but I have the basic expectation that she can take her clothes off and put on her own underwear and pants and socks. Sometimes she needs help getting the shirt over her head. But honestly, you would think she had no arms the way she flails around like she can't do anything for herself. I refuse to give in though, so we've had some rough mornings for about two weeks now, but we are slowly getting there. Mommy just needs lots of prayers for patience. :)

First haircut!

Today was a big milestone, probably more for Mommy than for Raegan. She has never had a haircut before, and we wanted to get it trimmed just a tiny bit before she started school. Raegan had been excited about it all week. She talked about it the whole car ride to my salon, and was running to the door. And as soon as we walked in, bam! No way was she smiling or talking to anyone. She held still pretty good though, and she perked up quite a bit when Daddy showed up.

Big Accomplishment

A big milestone that Raegan has met in the last couple weeks is being able to pedal her tricycle independently. Now she is OBSESSED with riding her trike and asks all day every day to go outside to ride. I took this video last week, when she was still having some trouble getting over cracks in the sidewalk. Since then, she's gotten to the point where she can pedal up and down the driveway with a little extra muscle, pretty smoothly.

Like a Big Girl

It doesn't seem like it was that long ago that this tiny baby needed me for every single thing. It's a mixed bag, being a mom. While I don't miss the nights of nursing every two hours, and the very early new days of Raegan only falling asleep when she was in contact with my body, I do miss that tiny baby.

And my daughter is most definitely NOT! A! BABY! anymore. The mantra of this spring has been, "I do it like a big girl." It's like as soon as we introduced her to the concept of a "big girl bed" Raegan realized that there was a whole wide world of ways to be a big girl out there. Our daycare provider said that Raegan really doesn't want to sit in the booster at the lunch table anymore (although Angela does insist on it so Raegan can reach her plate). And at home being a big girl is definitely a big deal. She doesn't ever want a sippy cup anymore (which I still give her if she wants a drink out in the living room). We've done away with the seat for the bath tub. She tries to refuse her potty seat on the toilet, although in the interest of keeping our bathroom somewhat clean, we still insist on that one. She begs to "walk like a big girl" (which means not holding my hand) in the store, and ZOMG! how dare I suggest that she has to hold my hand when we walk in the parking lot. Sometimes it's frustrating, because she wants things she just can't have yet (like walking independently in the parking lot), but it is fun to watch her turn into her own person.

Every year I teach I come across a handful of children who are not allowed to have that independence. I've had students who haven't known how to put their own socks and shoes on, or are entirely incapable of pouring their own milk. I've always marveled at that, because why would you want to have a baby forever? I loved Raegan's infant days: the snuggling, the nursing, the pulling her into bed at 5 a.m. to get another hour of sleep. But I love this little person in my life now. She has opinions, and carries on conversations, and she is her own person. Sometimes we have to reign her in a bit, because she wants more than she is capable of, but I know eventually she'll get to the place where she can do all those things.

I'm so excited to see what comes next!

LIttle Package, Big Personality

Somedays I just can't believe that such a big personality can be fit into such a little body! Raegan is just full of so much life and energy and intelligence - it just blows my mind. I never imagined that I could love anyone as much as I love this child. Every night before bed, I tell her, "You're Mommy's best girl. For how long?" She used to say "Forever and Ever" because that's what I would always say: "You're Mommy's best girl forever and ever." Now she says, "Three" Three has become a very important age to her. I cannot believe that my baby is old enough to be looking forward to being older at her next birthday.

On Saturday Raegan put on her Elmo hat and her butterfly sunglasses (upside down) and said, "I be a man Mommy." For whatever reason, she decided that in this dress up outfit she looks like a man. I don't even know where this child gets her ideas from sometimes.

Luke and I are staggered daily by how very smart Raegan is. She still counts to 13 (we just can't get her to say 14 or 15, because she'll skip up to 16 and then count to 20), and now she counts objects and tells you how many she counts. She names letters A, B, E, G, H, J, M, N, O, R, S, and Z consistently, and there are a few others that she will get right some of the time. She's finally getting those dang colors in - she names green, orange, and pink all of the time, and the rest inconsistently. Her attentiveness just kills me - it reminds me of Zane when he was that age. Her daycare provider said that they went to a park near our house the other day, and Raegan very clearly pointed out which street our house was on. When we were sitting at the corner of our street to go to the library this afternoon, she told me what direction we needed to turn to go to the library.

Raegan's very excited for preschool next year, although I think she's expecting to go to the elementary school that we've pointed out as "hers". I mentioned it as we drove past it one time, and she latched onto it immediately, and loves to talk about it. One day, I took her to the playground at the school and she just about came out of her skin with excitement. A lot of the children at her child care also go to preschool or kindergarten, so I think Raegan is really eager to join the big kids. We have her set up in the morning class at the Montessori preschool here in town. It's a little pricey, but it is four mornings a week, which is not something that any other preschool in town offers to 3 year olds. To me, it will be worth every penney to further enrich her smart little noggin.

Raegan is getting quite a bit out of child care too - check out this video of her naming all of the planets in order. They learned about them last month at Angie's, and last night Raegan had all of our jaws on the floor when she just rattled them all off in correct order. Luckily, she repeated it again so I could catch it on video. (When I asked her to do it "live" for Granny today, she informed me that she was busy eating her ice cream and could not. She's so sassy, most of the time in a funny way. lol)

Finally!

For whatever reason, blogger will NOT let me sign in from a computer to update. So updating from my iPod means no photos and about five sentences worth of update. I'm going to try to contact blogger and if they can't get it resolved I'm just going to have to set up a new blog somewhere else. :(

Raegan is all set for preschool in the fall. She's enrolled at the Montessori preschool at Christ Cathedral Church. She will be going four mornings a week, so it will be a big change, but we are really excited about it. Her cognitive skills are growing by leaps and bounds every day. I'm pleased that we found somewhere that's four days a week so we can really stimulate her learning.

Zane is about halfway through track season and doing very well. He's placed in the 400 at his last two meets, and so far has been to all four meets that his team has been in. Not every child gets to go to every meet, so this means that he's running good times to qualify to go.

Skating Superstar

My school had a skating party on Sunday. I went to see my students, and took Raegan along, since she could skate for free. This was her second time skating (we went in December for a church party). As soon as we got there, she asked for cake (because at church they gave us cupcakes after we skated). I thought that was pretty smart of her to remember that from over two months ago. The child's memory is insane!

Raegan wasn't nearly as nervous about it this time. After our second or third time around, she shook me off and said, "I do it Mama" and took off by herself. I hovered really close for awhile, but she never did fall, so I took some video on my iPod of her skating. The quality is kind of crappy, but ah well.

Update

Man, I am getting awful at keeping my blog up. Awful. Partially because I'm so busy with work/Raegan/chores/life, and partially because Raegan isn't changing every day anymore. There's not as much to report on. Although I keep thinking that I need to note the little things, because someday I can look back and remember "Oh yeah, she used to do that!" So here's some of the little things she's been doing lately.

Raegan is up to naming seven letters now: A, E, O, Z, H, G, and R. Sometimes she will point out K and I, but those aren't consistent yet. E is still her favorite letter, and anytime I wear a shirt that has an E on it, she immediately points it out. (It's *her* E, by the way.) The other day she shocked Luke. He asked her what planet she was from when she was being silly, and she said "Jupiter!" They've been learning about the planets at child care for the last month or so, and now if you ask her what planets are, she will say, "Mercury Venus, Earth, Mars." It's pretty awesome. She's a sponge - she just soaks up and remembers everything.

Raegan is definitely testing limits and boundaries right now. Two has been kind of rough, and I'm hoping that she'll start to outgrow this stage pretty soon. She growls and sticks her tongue out when she's mad about something, which is pretty frequent these days. I swear I hear "I'm mad" at least 5 times a day. And while I'm all for her recognizing her feelings, her way of expressing them just really isn't flying in our house. She's been taking a lot of moments to breathe and calm down in her room, and she's slowly figuring out what's what.

Raegan still adores singing and dancing. We're debating putting her in dance next fall, since she will be old enough. I don't want anything where they take it too seriously (no Dance Mom here!) but I think it would be fun for her. I keep meaning to enroll her in that Mom and Me gymnastics class through Parks and Rec, but it just seems like I never have time. Raegan has been singing a lot of "medleys" lately, where she starts with one song and segways into another. It's pretty funny to hear, especially since sometimes they go together pretty well. The other day she was doing "Santa Clause is Coming to Town" and "O Christmas Tree". Too cute.

Here's a couple random pictures from my iPod:

Enjoying Oreos that Granny and Papa bought her

Suspicious

\

Bathtime always makes Raegan so happy!

Drawing with sidewalk chalk on one of the many mild days we've had this winter!

Potty training and other achievements

The biggest news in our neck of the woods right now is that Raegan is well on her way towards being potty trained. YAY! Best Christmas present I could ever get, let me tell you. She started two weekends ago, when she just happened to go potty when she was sitting on the little toilet before her bath. (That's been something that's been part of the bath routine for months now.) Luke and I made a huge to-do about it and gave her some candy for it. The next day she told me after we got home from work/Angie's that she wanted to "go potty, get candy." I said sure, and lo and behold, she went potty again. Now we are to the point where candy is an occasional thing (basically between the hours of "after lunch and before supper") and she's staying dry for longer periods of time. Today she stayed dry from when I changed her after nap (2:30) until right before supper (6:00), with two trips to the potty in there. And one of them was in a public bathroom. Hollah for getting over that hump! :) My hope is to pick up some underwear after Christmas and give them a try since I'm not work from December 23rd until January 3rd. Raegan's not having quite as much luck with going potty at daycare, but so be it. She'll at least be weekend potty trained before too much longer. :S

Raegan's really starting to get into pretend play. She makes her little squirt toys talk to each other in the bathtub, and I've even caught her having her little pieces of candy walk around on the placemat, talking to each other. It's pretty cute. She also likes to do things and say, "Look at me, guys!" which I'm guessing she hears at daycare a lot. Now at night when we say prayers before bed, I'll tell her it's time to say prayers and she'll clasp her hands together and say, "God is great, God is good, now we thank Him for our food. Amen." Then she'll list the people she's thankful for and say, "Please help Raegan sleep well, Aaaaa-Men!" Her favorite songs to sing are "Where is Thumbkin?" and "I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee." Well, those and "Pumped Up Kicks". Luke must have sang it to her with his own lyrics in it before (he does that with a lot of songs) because one day she just started singing, "Kids with the pumped up kicks, run run faster, boo boo brush your teeth." lol She still loves all things Elmo and Sesame Street, but she really wants me to let her watch Barney when she sees it on Netflix. (Mean Mommy - I don't like Barney, so we're not watching it.) Raegan just learned how to gallop this last week, and she is so darn proud of herself for being able to master it. Those are all the things I can think of at the moment, so I'll leave you with a picture:

Raegan loves listening to Zane's MP3 player. He'll let her stick the earbuds in her ears for a minute, and she just loves it.

Cookies with Santa

I have done a horrendous job of keeping up with my blog this month. I have been so very busy with work, and Christmas, and just life. So for now, I'll put up some pictures, then later tonight or tomorrow I'll follow up with a loooong post about all the things Raegan has been up to lately.

Earlier this month Raegan and I went to cookies with Santa at the library. She is so very excited about the idea of Santa right now. Every morning we drive by a house that has a huge blow up Santa in their front yard. She starts looking for it about 3 blocks before we get to it, and she just loves it. So when I told her we were going to have cookies and see Santa, she was just tickled. First we frosted and ate a cookie and listened to a story. Santa came out at the end, and we got the chance to sit on his lap if we wanted. Like I said, she's excited about the *idea* of Santa. When we got to the point of actually sitting on his lap, she got super shy. I didn't really get much of a picture of Raegan with Santa, but I'm okay with that, because I don't want her to be scared of him. :)

Waiting to frost our cookie!

Working hard

Mmmmm.....

Raegan is getting so good at drinking out of a cup without a lid.

First glimpse of Santa coming in. :)

Like I said, the idea of Santa is great. Santa himself, not so much. :D